Prologue I

(Maybe Henry was prepared for this—he brought a knapsack with his belongings and
was ready to be a stowaway. He was chased on?)

Henry hadn’t known where was he going, only that he needed to get away. Away from
the terror, away from home, or away from whatever was chasing him, he wasn’t sure. He just
had to run.

He tried to get lost in a crowd of sailors. He hovered just close enough to them that it
would look as if he were walking with them without attracting their attention. The port was as
busy as usual but Henry was so focused on hiding that he didn’t even realize when one of the
sailors with a wooden leg looked right at him. “Kid? What do you want?” He asked in a
menacing gravelly voice, golden earring glinting in the sunlight.

Henry froze. “I—er, sorry sir!” He stammered before bolting to the nearest escape. He
ran away from the sea at first, but looped around back toward the ships when he noticed the
sailor following him. He ran up onto a ship, hoping they weren’t leaving anytime soon, and into
the broad, hairy chest of yet another sailor.

Henry only caught a “’Scuse me?” before running farther into the ship and down a ladder
into a storage room. It was a stupid decision—there was nowhere to hide down here. In a panic,
he opened the lid of a very large barrel and jumped inside, closing it overtop him.

It was very dark inside the barrel and he was starting to hate the smell of dry beans. It
wasn’t long after he had climbed in when he heard footsteps coming down the ladder. He held
his breath.

“Some street boy came runnin’ in. He ran right into Scully—poor kid, probably scared
‘im half to death!” Whoever was talking laughed.

“Yeah, guess so,” came another voice. The footsteps moved close to him, right in front of
his barrel and for one heart-sinking moment Henry thought he had been caught.

“D’you reckon he left?” said the first voice after they had looked for a few moments.

“Think so. Don’t know how he got past us, but he’s quick. Small, too. Kinda like the new
kid,” said the other.

The voices kept talking as they climbed up the ladder, but Henry let out a breath. He
moved to open the lid but as he did he felt a sudden moment. It was the ship—they had left the
harbor.

Henry laughed without feeling. He wasn’t sure whether to be scared or grateful. Well,
shit, he thought. I guess I’m stuck.
 Prologue II

Jack Roberts the Third, although he was soon to be without a title and surname, walked
on the cobblestone streets toward the ship. He kept all his belongings in the suitcase he was
clutching in his left hand, knuckles turning white. Breathe, Jack, he told himself, though it did
little to help.

He kept his chin lifted high. There were all sorts of people around him, but they shared
two things in common. One, they were very, very dirty, and two, they were peasants. Jack
wrinkled his nose at both the thought and stench of them. He ought to get over his prejudices
now, he supposed. After all, wasn’t that why he was there in the first place? But that train of
thought soured his mood and he pushed it out of his head before it could do any further damage,
walking towards the ship bearing the flag he had been looking out for.

He walked toward the plank between the pier and the ship but was stopped by a burly
man with a peg led. He was frowning and he crossed his arms. “What’s your business?” He spit
out.

“Pardon me, sir, but is this ship the Grand Rose? I need to speak to the captain.” Jack
tried to speak in his most polite tone, but it was difficult when a man built like a stack of bricks
stood in front of him.

The pirate narrowed his eyes. “What’s your proof? We don’t like harboring ruffians,” he
said gruffly.

Are you sure you don’t have a ship full of them already? Thought Jack, but he stifled it.
Instead, he pulled a folded letter out of his coat. “This should be enough, but I’m sure the captain
could vouch for me.”

The pirate’s mouth tightened and he handed the letters back grudgingly. “Welcome
aboard the Grand Rose, the finest ship in the seas. The name’s Ol’ Stumpy. ‘S a pleasure.” Jack
expected a handshake, at the very least, but Stumpy simply moved aside. He mentally shrugged
and stepped up onto the ship, ready for a new life.

The ship was unpleasantly busy. It would take some getting used to, at the very least. He
turned to whoever was at his side—who turned out to be a woman in a very large tricorn hat and
almost offensively purple trousers—and asked, “May I speak with the captain of this ship?”
 She laughed, revealing a gap-toothed smile. One of her front teeth had a gold crown.
“You’re talking to her, darling!”

Jack was taken aback. Women were becoming more and more liberated every day, but to
see a female captain was, well…unusual, to say the least. His father would probably have a few
choice words to say about her, and not very kind ones.

She stuck out a hand. “Captain Josephine Cormac, at your service. I use my nickname in
letters—some aren’t very keen on women ship captains,” she said, smiling. “You can call me
Josie once you sign the ship’s contract. Come with be down to the captain’s quarters.” Jack
shook her hand—that was all he could think to do before following her into the bowels of the
ship.
 Chapter 1

The storage cellar was cold, damp, and musty. It was only by the light of the moon
coming through the slats of the cover that Henry could see his roommate’s sharp cheekbones. He
looked over at him to make sure he was fully asleep. Jack was even paler than normal and his
straight, fine hair was spread over the hard ground. Henry liked him much better when he was
asleep. He seemed almost… nice. He didn’t have that pinched look on his face, and he wasn’t
making rude comments whenever someone did anything he thought was uncouth. Plus, he wasn’t
that awful greenish color—someone hadn’t gotten their sea legs yet and was instead resigned to
puking overboard every time the ship shifted.

Satisfied, Henry pulled a folded paper out of the space between his foot and the inside
sole of his shoe. It wasn’t old enough to be faded, but the edges had gone soft from use and its
creases were sharp. He unfolded it and looked at the message on the inside. He needn’t have—he
had already memorized it by now, and he was still no closer to figuring out what it meant.

He only looked for a moment or two before folding it back up and looking around the
room. He had to find somewhere to hide it. He assumed he was going to be on this ship for quite
some time and he didn’t fancy the thought of someone finding it and throwing it away, or worse,
finding it and figuring out what it meant before he did.

The room wasn’t large—the open space was only five square paces—but it had a lot of
nooks and crannies. There were all sorts of barrels and boxes stacked together and nearly no
open wall space. It would probably be best to put the note low down, in a corner next to the wall.
Henry probably wouldn’t be in a rush to leave, but if he did, he had the note memorized already.
He didn’t want to feel like a sap, but it was all he had left of home at this point.

He picked the back left corner of the room. It was angled so that someone standing
outside the door couldn’t see him. He grunted shifting a stack of boxes marked ‘jerky’ and froze
when he heard a voice. Peeking around the boxes, he saw that Jack was shifting in his sleep,
mumbling, and didn’t breathe until he stopped moving.

There was a little pocket of space between the wall and the stack and Henry slid the paper
in. A little white sliver peeked out.

Henry walked back to the thin wool blanket he had laid out next to his knapsack. Jack
was lying, asleep, on his right, with his posh suitcase laid out next to him.

Neither of them had thought to bring any blankets or pillows and they both sorely
regretted it. Henry thought Jack probably regretted it more—he seemed like the type of bastard
who slept in 400-count thread sheets made from Egyptian cotton with pillows stuffed with goose
feathers, or something equally snobbish.
 Henry couldn’t say he didn’t feel bad, though. He had never slept on the streets, though
he came close, and at his worst he had at least had a pillow. Josie, the captain, seemed to have
thought they didn’t deserve pillows yet.

Josie hadn’t exactly been pleased to see him, but she hadn’t thrown him off the ship—
although that wasn’t exactly an accomplishment, seeing as the only place off the ship was the
ocean surrounding them and she said the only reason he hadn’t yet walked the plank was because
she didn’t kill kids, especially defenseless ones.

Despite her (nearly) death threats, Henry thought Josie liked him more than she liked
Jack. Jack was—well, to be frank, a rich posh snob who only there rebelling from his father and
would probably be sick of ocean life in a few months. He would go running back to his estate
house and fortune and never think about the Grand Rose again, except to brag about to his
equally posh, stuck-up friends at dinner parties where they gossiped about the recent scandals in
their posh circles and oh, didn’t you hear? Madam Finch is having an affair with Monsieur
Black, but Monsieur Finch is having an affair with the man who owns the apothecary and oh,
isn’t that scandalous? They’ll say as they sip their wine.

Henry was used to dirty, messy spaces and people yelling and shouting all the time, but
Jack was unused to it and Henry supposed that if he heard another person cuss, his nose would
wrinkle so much his face would turn all squashy, like a particularly displeased pug. Henry
giggled quietly to himself and Jack let out a sigh from beside him.

He fell asleep to the gentle rocking of the boat and dreamt of short, squat pugs being sick
overboard.

Jack was convinced that his own personal hell was living on a boat. He was always
nauseous no matter what home remedy the pirate chef cooked up for him and everywhere he
looked was so dirty he couldn’t bear to even stand on the ground. That was entirely discounting
those who were on the ship in the first place, of course. There was Ol’ Stumpy with the peg leg
that he recognized, but there was also a very, very large burly man that, if Jack was being honest
with himself—and he rarely was—he was terrified of, and a bald old man with more teeth
missing than there.

There was a pair of sailors who must have been only a few years older than him—one
was a shorter man with dark ginger hair and a toothy grin and the other was a man with curly
blond hair and piercing green eyes. Jack didn’t think he had ever seen one without the other, and
while he had never seen anything explicit from either of them he assumed his father would have
some very choice words to say about sodomites, ruining God’s green earth with their devilish
desires, and of course they’re on a ship captained by a woman! But Jack simply kept out of their
way and kept to himself. He carries out the duties assigned to him and didn’t speak to much of
anyone.

He was studying the books he had brought with him in his free time. He wasn’t sure if it
was the fact that someone would certainly ask questions if he brought them above deck—and of
course it would be Henry, the stowaway. How did he get on the ship in the first place? He was
just so damned cheery all the time—or if it was the need to get away from everyone that made
him read in whatever room he could find empty in the bowels of the ship.

Whatever it was, he didn’t mind it. He enjoyed learning in the quiet—and he was
learning quite a bit. He had stolen several books from the library back at home, but he had also
snatched the one lying on his father’s beside table out of spite. Most were books that related to
his studies, but the one his father’s was a dictionary; English to some other language. He wasn’t
sure what it was because it was never named; except for the handwritten note on the inside cover
calling it the language of the old gods. He didn’t know what that meant. The note wasn’t written
by anyone he recognized, either, and it was unsigned.

The note read, “George—

I believe this would be of some use to you. It certainly was for me, and I know you plan
on following in my footsteps. Let this serve as my last warning, however. Danger lies in the path
I set out. I nearly can’t write its name, but the language of the old gods isn’t to be taken lightly.
Let anyone have the knowledge this book holds, and you will be kneeling at the feet of the Devil
himself in apology.”

Jack didn’t know what the note meant, other than the fact that it was strangely menacing
for a dictionary, and he carefully tucked it into a corner of his mind for safekeeping. The
language was difficult to decipher, too. It didn’t use the alphabet Jack was accustomed to using.
Instead, each syllable was a block of swirling and flowing strokes.

Despite the lack of light, he slowly got used to the other aspects of life at sea. The
rocking of the ship no longer troubled him and he could fall asleep listening to the sound of
Henry breathing much more quickly than he ever thought he would.

But some things didn’t change. He noticed Henry getting up and moving to the corner of
the room farthest from the door when he thought he was asleep. He noticed it every night, even
the first he was there. It was hard, especially then, falling asleep. He was in new surroundings
and—loathe he was to admit it—he missed home. He wasn’t going back, not after what had
happened, but he missed seeing his mother every day and he missed the stables where he could
ride his horse free without worry of passing days or his father or any worldly troubles at all.

Henry would wait for nearly half an hour, waiting for Jack to sleep, and then walk
quietly, holding his breath, to the corner. He would crouch and pull out a slip of paper, staring
intently. Jack had never seen what it was, exactly, but sometimes Henry whispered under his
breath. Jack had only ever caught him saying one thing: “I’m coming to get you.” It sounded like
a promise. Jack wondered what it was like to be on the receiving end of a promise so fiercely
kept, and then decided to stop pitying himself and fall quickly asleep. Henry curled up in their
thin blankets and Jack could only drift off once Henry’s breathing had slowed.

One thing Jack hadn’t expected on the ship was how quickly he would get over his not-
so-permanent distaste for his crew members. They had done nothing to change their behavior,
but he grew to tolerate even their drunkenness and their swearing.

Stumpy was the ship’s card-dealer and Jack took a particular liking to him. He only
played a fair game once in a blue moon, but despite his rather obvious cheating, Jack had lost to
him only twice—and in his defense, Stumpy was cheating extraordinarily well.

Still, Jack had grown up with a father who played blackjack in smoky backrooms and had
coerced more than one nanny to play with him, too. After he started escaping his stifling home
for precious hours at a time, he would go to the slum neighborhoods and play cards in exchange
for a pack of cigarettes or a few pounds. He would always give his earnings to the kids on the
street on his way home.

He got to know Ginger and Blondie, the pair attached at the hip. They were cagey when
he first started talking to them, but he learned they were married by Josie a few years ago. They
wore rings on chains around their necks, tucked into the shirts they wore. It wouldn’t be
recognized in any country, but they were just as in love as any man and woman, and upon
reflection, Jack thought they were probably more in love than the married couples he had known.
They weren’t having affairs with the nanny, were they? And so he sighed, aching just a little bit,
thinking about what that love would be like.

He even came to a type of understanding with Henry. They didn’t exactly like each other,
but they weren’t at each other’s throats like they had been in the first few weeks on board. That
had been…rough, to say the least, because it had culminated in them punching each other’s
lights out, but Josie had forced them to make up and once he wasn’t being an arrogant jerk,
Henry wasn’t too awful to be around. He was witty and knew when Jack hadn’t looked up from
his books in too long.

Pirates. They’re pirates on a ship out in the blue, blue waters, free. And maybe they pick
up a kid or two—from somewhere, they docked and the kids climbed on and no one paid them
much attention ‘til they noticed they were there—but that didn’t matter. As long as the captain
said to keep rowing, they kept rowing. The wind billows in the sails. The kids play blackjack on
the deck with Ol’ Stumpy, only he’s not that old and he keeps losing to the boy with the long
hair. At night the kids sleep with the food in storage on beds of grain, clinging to each other for
warmth, and when the sun comes up they pretend they haven’t seen each other before, haven’t
breathed close enough to see it echo in each other’s ears before.

Then came the mermaids. It wasn’t an issue at first. The first mate said at supper one
night after the captain had tucked in for the night that when he was a lad they had trouble with
them. A few members on the deck had died, ripped to shreds by the hungry sea-creatures. Once
they took what they were looking for, though, they left them alone.

Then came the meddling kids. The boy with the short hair has a newspaper clipping
rolled up in his pocket that first night he slept in the food storage room and he clutched it like
someone might take it. Someone did, eventually, take it. That someone was the boy with the long
hair. He snatched it from the other boy’s hands as soon as sleep had taken him and examined it
carefully with a practiced precision. Whoever the boy with the long hair was, he was certainly
unusual. He didn’t sleep that night. The nicked candle dripped wax onto the floor of the ship and
the boy with the long hair studied the paper.

The newspaper troubled him. It wasn’t the story—it was about a series of rather grisly
murders at a seaport town and despite being interesting, the boy figured it was unrelated—it was
what was marked on top. A secret code, it looked to be. It was long, much longer than he had
expected from a clipping so short. It was written in ink, rather than typed, and the handwriting
was neat and bland. The characters were swirling and circular. The boy with the long hair
committed it to memory and spent hours trying to decipher it. He was certain he could crack it—
and one must wonder where that certainty came from, although the boy certainly wouldn’t tell
them—but he finally admitted defeat.

He cornered the boy with the short hair one night, shortly after supper. It was dark and
the beginnings of a storm were just on the horizon, which spelled trouble for the ship yet to
come. The boy with the short hair had been sent to swab the deck before bed. He had pranked the
captain and, while he had been amused, had punished him before the company could get shirty
with him about being too soft on the boy.

So. The boy with the long hair cornered the boy with the short hair on the deck. The boy
with the short hair had what could be passable as a weapon—a mop—not to mention the dagger
he kept strapped to his calf underneath his boot, which he kept away so as not to cause trouble
and mistrust around the company. They disliked him enough as it was. The boy with the long
hair did not carry with him a weapon, although he was holding the scrap of newspaper and
perhaps a sharp enough wit that the lack of weapon did not matter.

The boy with the long hair stood at the bow of the ship and watched the boy with the
short hair work wordlessly. It was darker than he had expected and the stars were just waking up
for the night. He practiced finding and naming the constellations in his head—it helped him calm
down and reminded him of a home he once had. The boy with the short hair mopped quickly,
hoping to be in bed before long. He hadn’t missed the boy with the long hair but had hoped he
would stop brooding and come forward, but he doubted his ability to stop the dramatics.
Although he would only ever admit it at knife-point, the boy with the short hair rather loved the
boy with the long hair’s ability to entertain—he had been watching the performances put on by
the crew members and knew just how committed the boy with the long hair could be.

Finally, the boy with the long hair stepped forward. “Tell me what this is,” he said,
holding out the newspaper clipping, carefully folded but still worn at the edges from fingering
and the sheer length of time it had been in care. The expression he carried was not one of
anything at all, really. It seemed the boy with the long hair had perfected his ability to school his
features into a look of complete blankness long before he arrived on the boat. The boy with the
short hair knew him enough to see underneath it.

The boy with the short hair stopped his motion of cleaning and leaned on the wooden
handle of the mop. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. It might have been honest
—he wasn’t sure if the boy with the long hair was referring to the article or the writing—but
truly, he was stalling.

The boy with the long hair twisted his features into a sneer. “I think you do. What does
this mean? Why have you kept it for so long? More importantly, why did you keep it from me?”

The boy with the short hair sighed. He had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. “I don’t have
to tell you everything. God knows you don’t,” he added out of spite. “But if you must know,” he
said, taking a breath. The boy with the long hair watched carefully. He wouldn’t miss a word.

“It’s the last thing I have from home. My sister gave it to me when I saw her last, which
was nearly ten years ago, and she made me promise to come find here there.”

The boy with the long hair looked him in the eyes. “You’re sure that’s exactly what she
said? ‘To come find her there?’”

The boy with the short hair nodded. “Promise you’ll come find me. Go where it tells you;
I’ll be there, she had said. And then…” he trailed off, lost in his thoughts. He shook himself out
of it. “No matter. I haven’t seen her since, in any case.”

The boy with the long hair tightened his jaw. “I’m going to help you find her again.”

The boy with the short hair rolled his eyes. “Of course you are. With your—what was it
—stunning wit, natural charm, and usefulness as someone to stand around and look pretty?”

The other boy laughed. “You think I look pretty?” The boy with the short hair shot him a
look but didn’t deny it. “And I do have useful skills. They just tend to be less useful on a pirate
ship than in…other situations.” The boy with the short hair noticed the omission of what exactly
those situations where, but mercifully didn’t call him out on it. He had been skirting around his
own life before the ship long enough to notice when someone shouldn’t question things, anyway.

“Well, we’ll just have to see about that. And I suppose you are allowed to help me, seeing
as you know about the note either way,” the boy with the short hair said.

The boy with the long hair grinned his winning smile in victory so wide it nearly split his
face half-open. That had been something he learned on board—wherever he came from, he
certainly hadn’t been allowed to smile like that, and for good reason, too, thought the short
haired boy. It looked much too fetching on him to be appropriate. “I’ll help you finish the deck.”

He reached out for the mop the short-haired boy was leaning on when then ground
shuddered. It threw him into the arms of the short-haired boy and the mop clattered to the
ground. He clutched the front of his shirt to keep them from toppling over. “What was—?” The
boy with the long hair broke off and his eyes went wide in recognition.

The boy with the short hair turned and looked for what the boy with the long hair saw.
“Oh, sweet mother Mary,” he breathed.

Staring right back at them with sickly green eyes as large and round as dinner plates was
an enormous, scaly, devilish mermaid. She grinned at them, baring her needle-point teeth. Her
pale waxy skin was stretched taut, bony features jutting out of her face. She was nearly as long as
the ship and with a flick of her tail she sent a wave of water crashing over the edge and soaking
Henry and Jack.

“Uh—Henry?” Jack said shakily. “Is that a—”

“That’s a mermaid. Oh god, that’s definitely a mermaid. It’s huge—I’ve never seen one
before. Have you seen a mermaid? I’ve never seen a—oh god, it’s a mermaid.” Henry babbled.

The mermaid opened her mouth and let out an ear-piercing screech, not dissimilar to the
sound of a cat choking on glass, and Jack unfroze. “Henry, we need to get a lifeboat,” he said as
calmly as he could muster.

Henry tried to move, but Jack was still gripping at his shoulders. Finally, he wrenched
himself out of his grip and tried to untie the ropes keeping the lifeboat attached to the side of the
ship. “Help me, you idiot,” he said to Jack. “

OUTLINE

Beginning/exposition – they’re on the ship, explain why and how they got there, back
stories, etc. Jack finds the note and tries to decode it but he can’t do it without his fancy library at
home. It’s mermaid language, or the language of the old gods, or something, and Jack only
remembers it from when his father would show him his work as a young child, before Jack had
questions and wasn’t satisfied with his father’s answers and realized his father said some nasty
things about women and the gays and black people. Maybe, rather than having them meet on the
ship, they meet when Jack sneaks out of his house in the country and goes to the city—he’s
supposed to be meeting up with his friend? Maybe he’s organizing things so he can run away—
and he’s going to leave soon. He’s trying to get stuff for a boating license? Or maybe he’s trying
to find a ship that’ll take him. And he’s at the port, trying to sign up for a ship that’s not going to
be leaving too soon so he can really properly run away, but everyone’s turning him away even
though he has money because they’re leaving soon, like, tomorrow. He wants to leave in months,
but then he has to shorten his timeline into about two weeks. He’s terrified—he’ll be an adult
legally when he leaves, because he’s doing it right after his birthday, but he’s still scared his
parents will make him come home. Figure out a reason for it. But he runs into Henry instead and
Henry really hates him at first. Their meeting is dramatic and both of them say things they
probably regret. Henry’s clutching the paper in his hands—maybe it’s the anniversary of his
sister’s disappearance and everyone says she’s dead even though she’s not, I know she’s not, but
I’m here at the graveyard anyway because we had no one else. And in his anger he does
something where Jack sees the writing and freaks out because that’s the language of the old
gods, no one’s supposed to know about that! How did your sister even know about that? It’s like,
locked up in libraries and the only times people talk of it are in whispers and rumors that it once
existed. So then Henry’s like, uh, no it’s not. My sister has no way of knowing anything about
that. It’s been exactly one year since she disappeared. She was the one who took care of us, and I
can’t believe you would insinuate that she was doing something illegal. Jack realizes he has to
go otherwise he won’t be able to catch the last carriage ride into the country and he’ll be in huge
trouble so he frantically tells Henry to meet him there again next week (outside of a
bookshop/apothecary, maybe) and Henry shows up next week, fully expecting to be mugged, but
is instead met with Jack. He says look. I know this sounds insane, but if you really want to look
for your sister, I’ll come with you but we’re leaving tomorrow. Let’s find a ship that’ll take us
and I’ll meet you tomorrow. I’ll bring resources to try to decode it, but we have to go. Plus, I
have my own personal reasons I’m leaving so if you don’t show up, it’s only your loss.

So, they leave the next day.

Definitely they end up on an island somewhere. I’m not sure, but they’re looking for the
next step on the treasure map and maybe they leave in a hurry or maybe Jo says “you’re on your
own for now, kids, because we can’t help you forever” and even though it hurts it’s needed, but
they end up there and it’s calm and safe. It’s a rest from tension for a bit—the false happy
ending! But all the problems loom on the horizon and they really can’t avoid it.

REWRITE BEGINNING TO OUTLINE